


the creation of the antique albatross

by leafinsect



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: (of the robot variety), Coping, Disability, Functionist Bullshit, Gen, Gore, Medical Abuse, Mnemosurgery, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Robogore, Torture, Trauma, neurodivergence, neurodivergent character, shadowplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 11:44:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6752608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leafinsect/pseuds/leafinsect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(and the rime of the Functionist reign.) </p>
<p>The Functionists are a persistent antagonist, but Rung is determined to outlast them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the creation of the antique albatross

**Author's Note:**

> [(noncanon pronoun version)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6766735)
> 
>  
> 
> **albatross** : figuratively, “burden” or “curse,” in reference to Coleridge’s 1798 poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” in which a sailor shoots an albatross and is forced to wear its corpse around his neck to identify him as the offender.

Crest of the helm, top of the head, back of the neck. 

Rung scratches at it, from the small of his back to where his neck meets the curve of his helm, always in anxious moments, any real itch absent. The phantom touch feels sweet, like a tickle that makes his ampullae ignite. That in itself is pain and the scratching, scratching, scratching feels like a band-aid remedy that nanites can’t fix. 

Going through school and opening a psychiatric practice was hard enough, millions of years ago. It wasn’t as if functionism, conceptually, didn’t exist before the rise of the Functionist-controlled senate. But although from the beginning Rung was an anomaly, he was not always classified as an ornament. 

Poking and prodding was the introductory course. Rung came in once after being requested to, attempted to ignore the second summons, and was taken by force in the hundreds of instances that followed. “Force” meant several things coming from the Functionaries, in this instance: electrocution (which stings), inhibitor claws (a tad excessive), intimidation (not as powerful), and after a few pinpricks on the fourth visit, asking nicely.

First there was only a little bit of literal prodding, the lilt of a “please make yourself comfortable on the medical slab” (while we take you apart), the usage of hooks and scalpels and other tools used for carving a shell from a person. Pulling at joints and stroking the window to the spark, transformation seams, transformation cog, spark casing, crest of the helm, top of the head, back of the neck--

Rung didn’t predict the significance of their touch. Initially, they had always run their fingers from the back of his head, all too gently, to cradle his neck, all too eagerly. “Compliance code,” they called it. Different from “slave-coding,” which created a soulless thing lower than a disposable to exist at their beck and call. Ultimately, quite useless and too conspicuous. The Functionists valued subtle insidiousness as their chosen tactic. Most weren’t aware of their poisonous hand confining Cybertronian society in its grip, and those who were aware had been made aware. 

\--

The slab was somewhat cold under his frame, but the tone of voice the experimenter used was frigid. They didn’t always take him to the same room, and never used the same experimenter more than twice in a row, probably just to stay unpredictable and allow some semblance of what they thought was entertainment. Rung only ever saw staff at the Center, or at least, that’s what his brain module told him. 

He sighed at the thought, turning his cheek to the slab’s surface and staring out of the sole window in the room, searching for truth in a reality that could be fabricated with a single invasion of his neck wiring. Each visit involved “testing,” for why and how he transformed into what he did (wrong and abnormal), and each test was without clear meaning. 

The experimenter snapped their fingers for his attention and began without preamble. “Transform, please. Slowly. Move this panel here--no, not that way, try.. hm. Try flipping it. Here,” The sudden shriek of his vocalizer preceded the groan of metal near his left shoulder bending unnaturally under their fingers. 

“That hurt,” Rung protested quietly, carefully watching his phrasing to avoid the form of a request. Trying to ask things of them never ended well. He had to be careful with his tone as well, since they usually ordered him to stay quiet if he started getting loud and frantic. 

“Apologies,” they muttered, likely with sarcasm and irritation at the noise, before exerting the same amount of force. They were trying to make Rung’s root mode suit their design. 

Rung unintentionally lapsed into begging. He would chastise himself for it later, for giving in so early. The metal creaked slowly, and the small mecha shook. “N-no, no no no, please stop, p-please--” 

“You’re fine.” Another pull, aided by a hook-like tool of some sort, put new strain on his transformation seams. 

“Please, I-I’m so sorry but it hurts--” he pleaded, feeling his optics leak at the pain and the apologies they didn’t deserve. 

“Stop speaking,” they said curtly. Rung sighed and shut his intake abruptly, unable to resist following the order. There it was. He was surprised it took as long as it did for this experimenter to shut him up. He turned his head away from the other mecha’s face and took heavy invents, whimpering at the persisting ache. 

A wail erupted from his vocalizer as adjacent plating was twisted crudely, without warning. The cry went past his brain module; it was wordless and therefore permissible by the coding’s standards. The mecha blinked their visor exasperatedly in response. “Stop. Screaming.” More back plating was twisted, but this time met only with static and clicks from the bottom of Rung’s vocalizer. 

The bent panel in the worst shape clicked uncomfortably against the partially-transformed plating surrounding it. It felt wet, likely due to energon pooling between seams. Rung glared at the ceiling, venting shallowly through his parted intake and trying to look as close to defiant as possible. He wanted to scream. He wanted to watch the experimenter claw at their audio receptors but more than that, he wanted to encode the pain into a sensation that could process more easily and make him feel less. 

The line of code in his processor persisted. He settled for clenching his fists and locking and unlocking his joints. The experimenter didn’t smile at his silence, and took out their laser scalpel. “Better.” 

\--

Visit forty-four was when Rung got his backpack: false kibble that was really something of a scooter, if he were to take it off. It was a peculiar convenience that he decided to utilize, given his worsening chronic pain. Although they kept summoning Rung for further tests, he got the impression the Center was somewhat pleased with the ambiguity the visible wheel gave and, along the way, still frustrated with all the dead ends his altmode was giving them. 

Rung didn’t know what made them decide this mnemosurgical step was necessary. It was as if they remembered that the cursed thing was there to hide his nonsensical altmode, rather than help him get around. The illusion was shattered if one was to see the mecha take kibble off of his own back and use it like a separate mode of transportation. Wearing it made his back pain worse enough that Rung forewent wearing it completely, when he could. 

So it was the two hundred and sixty-third visit when Rung, weighed down by plating that was not his own or anyone else’s, was laid down on the medical slab. The hand carefully cradling his helm had a greater presence than the needles did when they entered his neck. He would look back on it and wish he could feel triumph over it being his last mnemosurgery. 

The Center’s officials maintained saccharine smiles as they shooed Rung out of the building once they let him know they were finished with him for the time being. He never noticed anything different at first, but that was the fun part of the game the Functionists had created for him. 

He stopped around the corner from the Center and without a second thought, unfastened the first clip that it took to remove his backpack, only to start trembling--violently. All of a sudden his frame had gone warm and cold at the same time and his fans started up. His backpack dangled off of his frame, last clip unfastened and the noise of it hitting the ground brought him to his knees. 

He was heaving on the side of the street, arms locking to support him in place--when did he get on the ground, why was he on the ground?--and he was sobbing in a panic, just before attempting to use a very usual method of travel. Realization dawned in a nauseating way as he mindlessly reattached what felt like a part of his frame. 

He curled up against the building, finding minimal comfort in the emptiness of the alley. It was impossible to see clearly through his glasses; they had flooded with solvent in minutes. Thankfully the darkness in the late hour posed no danger, since the area surrounding the Center was usually patrolled by Functionaries, who detested impoverished homeless mechen and criminals only slightly less than taxonomic transgressors. 

The compliance coding was only in effect around a Functionist official who gave him commands within the time span of six hours--Rung had counted--and his joints would be in a perpetual state of dull ache, and every inch of his plating would light up like a star map under UV light, but--

The only thing that rivaled the psychologically painful sensation were traumatic flashbacks. But even they were manageable; nothing was as instantaneously terrifying and panic-inducing as trying to take off his backpack.

Rung took off his glasses and wiped at his optics, letting the fluid run and finding solace in the blurring colors that were his surroundings. _An induced traumatic response every time I try to take off the false kibble._ He touched the metal painted the same orange as the rest of him and felt nothing.

\--

Rung counted the duration of his in- and exvents carefully, timing one longer than the other. _You’re in your habsuite,_ he thought, optics shuttered, _on the Lost Light, and you’re safe._ There wasn’t a single hint of panic to be found in his EM field, but preliminary grounding never hurt anyone. 

Invent, exvent. _You’re in your habsuite, and the Functionists are dead._ One clip, unclicking. He is the surviving martyr for the stragglers that outlived Functionist persecution. 

Another clip. His fingers twitch. Take your time. The thing on his back is not the burden and it, conquerable, haunts no mechanism. He reaches around to unfasten a third clip near the small of his back. 

Rung is the albatross, a curse on all of-Twelve and a death knell for anyone who dares think to resurrect their legacy. The last clip unfastens under still hands, and Rung’s backpack clatters to the floor, its wheel spinning absently. 

He can’t think to melt it down with scrap, or launch it out of airlock. Nothing so dramatic--or drastic, considering it took millions of years for him to be able to take it off for more than a few minutes at a time. He had once briefly considered mnemosurgery to erase those lines of code and save himself the separation anxiety-induced episodes, but decided gradual desensitization would be the best solution. 

It was. Rung kicks the backpack off to the side absentmindedly and sits down at his desk, ready to go over his notes and rebuild his model of the second Ark.


End file.
